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Meatpacking Remakes Rural U.S. Towns
Sunday August 19, 4:45 AM EDT
DODGE CITY, Kan. (AP) — This is the home of Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson, of Boot Hill and the Long Branch Saloon, of cattle drives, buffalo hunters and the romance of the American West. But that's the Dodge City of yesteryear.
Today, downtown has Mexican restaurants and stores more reminiscent of shops south of the border than Main Street Kansas. The city of 25,176 even has a new nickname: "Little Mexico."
Signs advertising "Envios a Mexico" — retail outlets where workers send hard-earned wages back home to Mexico and other countries — hang outside many Dodge City stores. Houses occasionally fly Mexican flags, whipped hard by the prairie winds.
Dodge City ... Cactus, Texas ... Fort Morgan, Colo. ... Postville, Iowa: For more than a hundred years, this region provided a bucolic idyll and a ready example of American life and values. Today, iconic farm towns struggle with a new economic model, one that requires a workforce that is poor and overwhelmingly Hispanic.
It's not easy. The immigrants who have flooded these communities are stretching schools and law enforcement. Still, at a time when other rural towns are slowly dying, Dodge City and meatpacking towns like it boast thriving economies.
"If these people can get past the gauntlet of the border, we welcome them here with open arms," said Ford County Sheriff Dean Bush, Dodge City's modern-day counterpart to Wyatt Earp.
http://finance.myway.com/jsp/nw/nwdt_rt.jsp?section=news&feed=ap&src=601&news_id=ap-d8r406s80&date=20070819
Sunday August 19, 4:45 AM EDT
DODGE CITY, Kan. (AP) — This is the home of Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson, of Boot Hill and the Long Branch Saloon, of cattle drives, buffalo hunters and the romance of the American West. But that's the Dodge City of yesteryear.
Today, downtown has Mexican restaurants and stores more reminiscent of shops south of the border than Main Street Kansas. The city of 25,176 even has a new nickname: "Little Mexico."
Signs advertising "Envios a Mexico" — retail outlets where workers send hard-earned wages back home to Mexico and other countries — hang outside many Dodge City stores. Houses occasionally fly Mexican flags, whipped hard by the prairie winds.
Dodge City ... Cactus, Texas ... Fort Morgan, Colo. ... Postville, Iowa: For more than a hundred years, this region provided a bucolic idyll and a ready example of American life and values. Today, iconic farm towns struggle with a new economic model, one that requires a workforce that is poor and overwhelmingly Hispanic.
It's not easy. The immigrants who have flooded these communities are stretching schools and law enforcement. Still, at a time when other rural towns are slowly dying, Dodge City and meatpacking towns like it boast thriving economies.
"If these people can get past the gauntlet of the border, we welcome them here with open arms," said Ford County Sheriff Dean Bush, Dodge City's modern-day counterpart to Wyatt Earp.
http://finance.myway.com/jsp/nw/nwdt_rt.jsp?section=news&feed=ap&src=601&news_id=ap-d8r406s80&date=20070819